Thursday, September 03, 2009

I want Space Hulk. Ya hear, GW? I want to spend my money on your product. The problem is that I don't want to buy it now. I want to buy it, oh, more in the February time frame.

"Don't wait!" says GW. "Space Hulk is limited edition and will only be available for a short time!"

You know what? Hogwash. Plastic figures cost a ton to tool, and if GW has gone to all the trouble to make new dies for the Space Hulk figs, then they are planning to sell a lot of them. I'm guessing that means more than will fly off the shelves on 9/5/09. So either they are looking to spend a ton of money developing a new game that will be impossible to buy in a month or they plan on releasing an unlimited edition later. I can wait until then. If they don't plan on producing it after this limited release, then forget it. I don't want another unsupported game (cough*bloodbowlnecromundabattlefleetgothicmordheim*cough).

Seriously, guys. I pre-ordered Black Reach because it looked so great, and it wasn't limited in any way. Space Hulk looks great, but the idea that I mightmiss my chance to buy it because I don't feel like ponying up $100 right before my kids go to school really grinds me.

4 comments:

Yeah, exactly. I can't see them selling like hotcakes and then GW saying 'well, we arent making any more'. I expect in a few months time (i.e. around Xmas' for a 'back by popular demand, here is Space Hulk' and then for the terminators and the genestealers to be repackaged individually for the release of the next Blood Angels and Nids codex respectively.

I know a couple of guys who order stock from GW and they were told the same thing - that there would be enough Space Hulk copies to run until at least Christmas. Allocations were made for copies a while ago, and these were sent to GW.

Then, a week before release, GW calls all of its independents and tells them there will be no Space Hulk as they made a mistake with the numbers. Could this be because all of the independents had sold out at there lower price point, and copies were still sitting un-ordered on the shelves in GW stores? Incidentally GW denied that a 'pre-order' sheet had ever actually existed. This isn't so much a prevarocation, but an outright lie, and shows that old habits die hard for the treatment of independent sellers by GW.

Its a risky strategy. I worked with Corgi models for years (the masters of the 'limited edition' mistruth) and such a marketing scheme will only work to this degree once, and risks damaging the loyalty of established customers who will no doubt feel jipped when Space Hulk is available, at 20% less cost through independents, 2 months from now.

Will this happen? I don't know, but if even a single customer doesn't get a chance to hand over their 100$ for a copy of Space Hulk then it should be regarded as a failure of a business decision.

As if to drive the point home with gusto, GW's newletter yesterday said the following:

Limited stock: Space HulkThis brand-new version of our classic board game is a lavish, limited-edition item, and thousands upon thousands of you have already pre-ordered a copy (some folk have ordered several!). If you're yet to secure your copy then act fast to avoid disappointment - order your copy of Space Hulk today.